FAST FASHION
One said, ‘Fashion affects people’s living wages, child labour, co2 and causes many serious issues.’ While another added, ‘It causes pollution as they burn the fabric and cheap fabrics are made of chem- icals.’ A third student said, ‘Fashion is the result of landfills, plastic in the ocean,pollution, classism, child labour and animal abuse.’ The students on the HSDC fashion course have been studying the topic of fast fashion recently and have created pieces of work to represent these ideas. They’ve made costumes and dresses from plastic to demonstrate the damage it can do, as well as using more natural materials to show the options we have in the future.
Fast fashion is a huge threat to our environment and it’s all of our jobs to challenge this - none more so than HSDC fashion students. So what is fast fash- ion? It’s the title given to clothing that is made at a fast pace using cheap materials; affecting the world socially, environmentally and ethically. Students at HSDC’s South Downs campus have described it as harmful to the natural environment, listing off the impacts that it has on different factors in society today. But what constitutes fast fashion? What can we do to ensure that our money is spent on more ethical products and how can the world become sustainable again? Fast fashion has become the new normal in the world we live in today, with clothing stores having a stronghold over a lot of people’s shopping habits. It’s claimed that shops like Primark and Boohoo rely on underpaid factory workers overseas and child labour to manufacture their clothes at a fast pace and sell them at an affordable price. By brands using this process, significant damage to the environment is being made every day. Clothes in this day and age are manufactured, worn and discarded at such a high speed that it forces clothing businesses to constantly have a stream of new items available for shoppers. Most fast fashion clothing is produced using artificial fibres and materials, usually formed through chemical processes as opposed to natural fibres. These chemicals end up resulting in harmful air pollution throughout the world. However, the environmental impact of these processes tend to be ignored, as the main appetite of a company is profit. A lot of people don’t tend to consider these fac- tors when it comes to buying new clothes, the only things we consider are the price and the quality. This is what makes it so hard for sustainable fashion to become a new way of life as the prices are a lot higher than those sold in the fast fashion industry. I spoke to students at HSDC South Downs campus on the Level 3 University of Arts London (UAL) Fash- ion, Design and Construction course and asked their opinions of the impact of fast fashion on the world... I started by asking their thoughts on the social, en- vironmental and ethical impacts of fashion.
Across the country and around the world students are adding their voice to this movement to change our attitude to fashion. Indeed other students connected to UAL have been campaigning. Other students around the world must have a responsibil- ity to not only create great products but tackle fast fashion and challenge some of the unethical issues in the industry. Hundreds of students from UAL’s six colleges got together to create a fashion parade for climate justice. I also spoke to HSDC fashion lecturer (Carla) and asked her opinions on sustainability and fast fash- ion: How would you define sustainability and why is it important? “There’s a lot of pressure on the fashion industry at the moment because of how much waste they pro- duce. But it’s not just waste, it’s chemicals. They use amazing amounts of water just to make one shirt and it all has a damaging effect. The biggest issue is fast fashion and it’s the kind of thing when people go out and buy an outfit, wear it once and don’t wear it again. I know that famous people within the
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